Rogue vs The Baseball
by cloudyailin
Summary: Oneshot of the results of a little mishap at the mansion.


Logan watched out the window, as the sight of the boy running across the yard towards the mansion at full speed had caught his eye. It certainly couldn't mean anything good. The kid shouted as he approached. "Help! Someone's hurt!"

Logan sighed. Not only was the announcement too vague for his tastes, Storm was out of the mansion today on business. He hoped this wouldn't involve a hospital run. He hated hospitals, especially when he was forced to wait around inside them. The smells unnerved him.

He tossed his book aside and headed for the balcony. "Who's hurt?" he called down. "How bad is it?"

The kid dared to answer with a shrug. "I don't know. They just told me to run for help."

Logan swung over the railing and dropped to the ground. "Go inside and get the first aid kit from the kitchen. And don't come back without it."

"Yes, sir!" the kid answered with a smart salute.

Logan couldn't tell if the squirt was being sarcastic or not, so he let it slide as he hurried off in the direction the boy had come from, out to the field where the students liked to play. Logan went at a fast pace, as he knew the distance wasn't far enough to wear him out. But the messenger passed him on the way there, and Logan could see the flash of the orange bag now in his hand. He nodded approvingly to himself.

---

"Wolverine's coming," Billy announced cheerfully as he came to a halt beside the crowd which had gathered around the injured.

"You gud Logan?!" Rogue demanded painfully, her voice much altered. She was clearly not happy, though her expression was mostly concealed by the once-green wadded up glove she was holding to her bleeding face. "Shit!"

Some of the younger kids giggled, even through the seriousness of the situation. Rogue would have laughed at their surprise, if not for the fact that the pain felt close to dangerously overwhelming, and the blood was starting to clog her throat a bit. She swallowed again.

"Move!" she heard Logan order suddenly, ruining her rather impulsive plans of getting up and heading to a hospital before he arrived. A hand swatted through the overly-helpful teenagers that had spent the last several minutes crouched at her side.

Then Logan was next to her and reached for her face, his expression one of dark concern. She swatted his hand away quickly, making sure that it was her gloved hand she used, and scooted herself back a few inches though the movement made her field of vision swim crazily. "Don't you even think about it. I'm not dying. You touch me and I won't speak to you for a week."

He snorted. "Like you could go a whole week," he replied easily, but she knew instantly that her words had hurt him, and his humor was to cover up the pain of it. "Why do you not want this fixed?" He lifted the blood-soaked glove away from her face, and she let him, knowing he wouldn't try to touch skin against her will.

She watched his eyes carefully, using him to gauge just how bad he thought the injury was. As much as it hurt, it wasn't immediately life-threatening, she saw quickly; he stayed calm.

"I've got a field trip tomorrow. I know you'll get me in trouble."

"Seems to me you find trouble easily enough without my help."

"You always want to start it."

He grinned. "And you, of course, do not."

She went to shake her head emphatically, but stopped herself when it only worsened her pain. "No, I don't."

"No doctor's going to have that mess fixed by tomorrow. You'll be spending most of the rest of the day in surgery."

She blinked in surprise from that thought, and then again when the intense desire to close her eyes swept over her. "You don't know that."

"Fine. Let's get you to a doctor then. You can hear it from a professional. But first, I have a question. What the hell happened?"

The crowd drew back a few feet at his angry tone. From her right, the second closest person to her besides Logan, Piotr answered quietly, "It was an accident."

Rogue winced, a slight rustling movement in her shoulders, as she was still trying to keep the pain from rising again. Her stomach seemed to lurch every time the pain increased, But there was such deep regret in his voice. He was probably more upset than she was at this point.

She could feel the energy in Logan shift. The stillness, the motion, the focus. To give him purpose was a dangerous thing, Rogue understood from her two forays into his psyche. Someone usually ended up hurt. And sure enough, he started to move towards Piotr. Rogue knew that the boy was rather skilled at protecting himself, but only from dangers that he could see coming, and Logan moved pretty fast.

So Rogue did the only thing she could from her prone position. She grabbed Logan with her bare hand. Her fingers wrapped themselves around his neck, which was a good handhold. As she pushed herself upright, Logan dropped to the ground. In only the span of a few seconds her face was healed, and Logan was laid out, a bloody hand print on his neck.

She took a deep breath as the power -- raw energy stolen from Logan -- flooded her body. Her nerves burned with sensation, and her muscles suddenly ached to be moving, to relieve some of this excess. Her brain lit up, a thousand minute crevices suddenly awakening, as they had every time Rogue had touched Logan. His instincts always overloaded her mind. He felt everything, saw, heard, tasted, smelled everything, he thought about everything. It was more activity than any mind she'd ever absorbed. There were functions that her own brain never performed. It was its own adrenaline rush, and she struggled for a moment to comprehend and adjust.

Deep breath. Heart, slow down.

Rogue bent over him after wiping her face mostly clean with her gloved hand. "Do you know the meaning of the word 'accident'?" she questioned, using her foot to nudge his heaving chest.

She knew he hadn't been pushed quite to unconscious. His heart still beat its awake, active pulse. His muscles still lay in their ready to move positions. He still smelled of the sweat and human body and now, exhaustion.

His eyes flickered open, scanning her face.

She stared down at him, arms crossed her lips tight in irritation. "Unintentional. No one meant for it to happen. No one needs to be punished or shown a lesson. It was just a mistake. Carelessness on all our parts, including mine for not paying attention."

He glanced at her face carefully, and she realized that he was making certain that her injury was completely healed. She had surprised him with her speed and choice of action, but he was pleased with the end result. She rolled her eyes. "You are unbelievable, you know that?"

His lips twitched, but he held back the grin as she turned away without even offering to help him up.


End file.
